A research project by Matthew Sangster exploring life and culture in London in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries using Richard Horwood's PLAN of the Cities of LONDON and WESTMINSTER the Borough of SOUTHWARK, and PARTS adjoining Shewing every HOUSE (1792-99)

The slideshow above shows the forty plates from the third volume of Ackermann’s Microcosm of London (1808-10). The titles of the plates are listed below. All bar one of these images are taken from a copy of the Microcosm owned by the Lewis Walpole Library and are used with permission. The second image from the volume, of the Royal Circus, was kindly provided by the Bishopsgate Institute, who have their own display of Microcosm images from their copy available here.

If you want to examine one of the images in more detail, right-click on that image and select ‘Open image in new tab’. Hovering over the slideshow will bring up the pause button and buttons to skip to a particular image.

The Microcosm is introduced here and the plates can be seen mapped onto Horwood’s Planhere.